The degree of reproduction: education, jobs, and gender

Grace E. Venechuk and Jason Paul Bonham
Additional contact information
Jason Paul Bonham: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2026-038, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: The macrolevel relationship between increases in women’s education, family SES, and declines in fertility is well-established. However, region-specific studies (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa) often highlight exceptions to this trend. We add to the literature by examining this relationship within the historical context of Utah. Utah is an outlier in many ways—it has historically been homogenous with regards to religion, had strong schooling systems, and had higher than average fertility. In this context, we examine whether 1) husband’s employment is associated with wife’s education levels, 2) wife’s education levels are associated with age at first birth and total births, and 3) the relationship between the interaction of husband’s employment, wife’s education and fertility outcomes. We find a negative relationship between wife’s education and fertility—however, we also find that, among self-employed husbands, each additional year of wife’s schooling is associated with an increase in total number of children.

Keywords: Utah; completed fertility; education of women; fertility; gender; occupational choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2026-038.pdf (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2026-038

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2026-038

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().